A Scoping Study of Indian Child Welfare

Background: This scoping study addresses one of the most pressing issues facing child welfare policy makers and practitioners today: the dramatic overrepresentation of Indigenous families at all levels of the public child welfare system. Disparities persist despite the federal Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978 which requires active efforts to prevent removal of Indian children from their families and communities. Nonetheless, Indigenous children in the U.S. are 1.6 times more likely to be subjects of alleged maltreatment reports than are White children (Children’s Bureau, 2012) and have the highest rates of out-of-home care with 13 in care per 1000 compared to 4.2 for Whites (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2013). Our research questions are: 1) What is the current state of the published, peer reviewed empirical literature relevant to understanding the reasons for disparities in the involvement of Indigenous families in the child welfare system? 2) Why do disparities persist?

Methods: We primarily use Arskey and O'Malley's (2005) methodological framework for scoping studies with some elaboration including recommendations by Levac et al. (2010). We identified and selected relevant articles based on the following criteria: empirical studies published in peer-reviewed journals addressing why Indigenous children fare worse in child welfare systems than White children in the U.S. and Canada.

Results: Question 1: Our scoping study yielded 37 studies published in peer-reviewed journals that contained original, empirical data pertaining to child welfare with Indigenous families. Approximately half (N=19, 51%) of these studies were concerned with understanding disparities in child welfare involvement. A number of other studies (N=11, 30%) focused on culturally-based child protection practices and principles within Indigenous communities. Most of the studies (N=24, 65%) used quantitative methods, and most of these studies (N=15) used large, nationally representative data bases. Only six studies (16%) focused on specific tribes. With the exception of assessments of 3 evaluation studies (8%), the experiences of Indigenous parents and youth actually involved with child welfare were notably absent.

Question 2: These studies indicate that disparities in the involvement of Indigenous families persist because, relative to other child welfare-involved families, they typically experience intense social challenges in the face of few available services. They also may experience cultural biases when accessing available child welfare services that undermine any trust and engagement. Some promising research suggests that partnerships between government child welfare systems and Indigenous communities can improve services to struggling families.

Conclusions & Implications: Given the seriousness of the social justice issues, as well as the sheer volume of empirical research in child welfare, the question of how to strengthen child welfare with Indigenous families clearly is under researched. Notable gaps in the existing literature include the voices of children and parents involved in child welfare systems; and attention to cultural variation across Indigenous nations of North America pertaining to child protection beliefs and practices. More work also is needed to design, implement and evaluate culturally-based child welfare practices to eliminate disparities.